Site editor · September 30, 2026
Removed the anachronistic functioning Colleges of Magic and unified contemporary Emperor; added the Anarchy and four documented claimants.
lore+29-4
| Two and a half thousand years ago, the lands between the World's Edge Mountains and the Sea of Claws were a scatter of warring human tribes, prey to greenskins and worse. One man changed that. Sigmar Heldenhammer, chieftain's son of the Unberogen, united the tribes by oath, marriage, and hammer-blow, sealed an alliance with the dwarfs that endures to this day, and broke the greenskin hordes at Black Fire Pass with the runehammer Ghal Maraz singing in his fist. He ruled for fifty years, then set down his crown, walked east alone, and passed out of history into godhood. The nation he left behind refused to bury him: it enthroned him in heaven instead, and the Empire of Man has marched beneath the sign of his hammer ever since. |
| The Empire of Man is the human realm founded by Sigmar, but the Empire of Warhammer: The Old World has no universally accepted emperor. Rival claimants and regional powers compete within a shared Imperial identity. This is an earlier period than the reign of Karl Franz familiar from later Warhammer Fantasy stories.[1](#reference-1)[2](#reference-2) |
| ··· |
| What Sigmar built, faith, steel, and gunpowder now sustain. Faith: the warrior-priests of the Cult of Sigmar swing their hammers in the front rank beside the men they bless, and the Grand Theogonist can raise a crusade with a word. Steel: the state regiments, province by province, drill common men (millers, coopers, ploughboys) into lines that hold against horrors no sane man should face for a soldier's wage. Gunpowder: from the cannon-foundries of Nuln and the workshops of the Imperial Engineers comes the Empire's great heresy against the old order of the world, the proposition that a farmer's son with a handgun is the equal of anything with claws. Add the eight Colleges of Magic, founded in desperation during the Great War Against Chaos and tolerated warily ever since, and the Empire fields the strangest arsenal in the Old World: prayer, pike, powder, and sorcery marching in the same column. |
| ## The Anarchy |
| ··· |
| It should not hold together, and often it barely does. The Empire is not one realm but a bickering confederation of great provinces (Reikland, Middenland, Averland, Stirland, and their peers), each ruled by an Elector Count with a runefang at his hip, an army at his back, and a shelf of grudges older than most kingdoms. The counts elect the Emperor and never let him forget it. Middenheim's wolf-cult scorns Altdorf's hammer-cult, coin quarrels with pedigree, and provinces have gone to war over rivers, brides, and insults three generations stale. Yet this fractiousness is the Empire's strange strength: a nation of rivals is a nation of armies, and when the Emperor's call goes out against a common foe, the feuds are set down with unsettling speed. The counts know a truth their enemies keep missing: the argument only continues if the Empire survives to have it. |
| The studio's December 2024 explanation distinguishes this period from the Age of Three Emperors. That earlier arrangement ended after the attempted election of Magritta of Marienberg in Imperial Calendar 1979. Opposition from the Cult of Sigmar helped break it apart, leaving the period known as the Anarchy.[1](#reference-1) |
| ··· |
| And the enemies always come. Chaos marauders pour down from the north when the Dark Gods stir; beastmen breed in the forests that press against every town wall; the dead of Sylvania do not stay buried; greenskins hammer the mountain passes; and beneath the streets, things officially declared not to exist gnaw at the Empire's foundations. Every power that would end the world of men must first break the Empire of Man, and so far nothing has. It is the anvil on which the fate of the Old World is hammered: scorched, dented, ringing from blow after blow, and unbroken. The Empire does not win every battle. It does something harder: it is still standing when the smoke clears, every single time. |
| Four major blocs and smaller free states retain a shared Imperial identity despite their shifting alliances.[1](#reference-1) |
| ## Four claimants and their centres |
| The development diary identifies four principal powers in this setting:[2](#reference-2) |
| - **Westerland:** Elspeth Magritta VI, associated with the wealth and trade of Marienburg. |
| - **Osterland:** Count Sigismund Ulric, ruling from Middenheim. |
| - **Reikland:** Prince Wilhelm I of Altdorf, a devotee of Sigmar. |
| - **Talabec:** Duke Ludwig XII, ruling from Talabheim. |
| This is a political map for the earlier setting, not a list of the rulers in every later Warhammer publication. The familiar provincial names do not all represent independent blocs at this point. A reader comparing two maps should first compare the dates and campaigns they depict. |
| ## Armies of towns and provinces |
| State Troops and State Missile Troops form recognizable parts of an Imperial army, alongside knights, artillery and machines such as the Steam Tank. The 2024 range preview also presents characters, engineers and religious figures, showing how a force can combine regional soldiers with specialist support.[3](#reference-3) |
| For a collection, choosing a town or province gives a useful starting identity. Decide what its regiments share in their colours, banners and basing before expanding into every available kind of specialist. A political bloc can contain several local traditions, so a campaign army need not make every regiment look identical. |
| ## Magic before the Colleges |
| Magic is present, but the later Colleges of Magic have not yet been established. The studio describes Battle Wizards, Elementalists and Necromancers as examples of traditions before that organized system of teaching. Their acceptance varies between regions and religious cultures.[1](#reference-1) |
| ## Earlier history, later consequences |
| The setting precedes the Great War Against Chaos and the Siege of Praag. Magnus's eventual unification of the Empire belongs to the later events towards which this period leads.[2](#reference-2) Keep that sequence in mind when following character links: a famous Imperial figure from a later era is not automatically active in an Old World campaign. |